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Anyone would think that Theresa May didn’t care about M&A bankers.

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In her speech just before being declared Prime Minister, she had nothing encouraging to say to the poor devils. The focus was all on “ordinary, working people” and how corporate bosses were paid too much. Not a word about how bankers were supposed to make a living now the referendum has scared the buyers away.

And as if things weren’t bad enough, she also dropped a bombshell. Her government would want to block foreigners buying up some British companies in key sectors such as pharmaceuticals. And, possibly, chocolate. She even proposed putting worker representatives on company boards. Which would also make deals harder.

Those in the City who had been nervous about the populist tone of the Tory leadership campaign were right. It proved infectious. Michael Gove had pointed out that many big M&A deals do not create shareholder value but “do generate huge fees”. May then declared it was time for Britain to protect its corporate crown jewels.

This could turn out to be just campaign talk. But it does form part of a broader, interventionist approach to the economy, on which May seems very keen. Implying that George Osborne’s conversion to activist industrial policy had been half-hearted, May urged a radical approach that would “put people back in control”.

Kraft’s takeover of Cadbury and Pfizer’s bid for AstraZeneca were cases where it should not be just shareholders that determine the outcome, she said. “Workers have a stake, local communities have a stake, and often the whole country has a stake.” A proper industrial strategy “wouldn’t automatically stop the sale of British firms to foreign ones” but it should be capable of stepping in to defend a sector as important as pharmaceuticals.

I don’t know how much thought May and her advisers have put into this. But the wording suggests they realise that to block a wide range of foreign bids the government would need new legal powers. The reference to Cadbury is instructive. Drugs are one thing. But it’s a stretch to claim creme eggs are strategically important. And though there was strong public opposition, it was not clear at the time that a Kraft takeover would be bad for Cadbury, its workers or the country. Nor, six years on, does the evidence suggest that it has, indeed, been bad, despite faux media outrage at ditching of chocolate coins, changing the shape of Dairy Milk chunks and swapping sultanas for raisins in Fruit & Nut.

Citing Cadbury suggests that May might want to block any big foreign takeover that was unpopular with the workforce and the Daily Mail. Under May, the UK might be just a little bit less “open for business”.

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Bankers might hope the idea would be killed off by Tory free marketeers. But many seem to have caught the interventionist bug, including Sajid Javid, in his efforts to save Tata Steel UK.

Leaving the EU would give the UK more freedom both to bail out popular companies and block unpopular takeovers. In contrast, putting workers on boards is something Britain successfully prevented the EU from imposing. The irony is that May might celebrate Britain winning back control by adopting something Germany had been trying to force on us for years. It’s enough to make an M&A banker weep.